Sales Funnel vs Buy Funnel – Sales Cycle vs Buy Cycle

By Helqasem, on October 7th, 2009

As Pre-Sales resources we should have an in-depth understanding of the Sales Cycle and the traditional sales funnel. Although the Sales Manager orchestrates the deal, pre-sales should be aware of his strategy and the steps they are going to progress through to turn leads into closed deals.

I came across this video on YouTube. It is probably more interesting for Sales people, but I found it an interesting approach. The Interviewee hear has written a book called “The Funnel Principle”.

He argues that the traditional Sales Funnel is outdated and an artificially created process developed by Sales people for Sales people and not customers. The Buy Cycle changes the focus back to the customer, where you as a sales organisation are working to understanding the buying process of the customer and matching your activities to fulfil the procurement needs of the customer. The jury is out on this one for me, the Sales funnel is a time tested logical process for generating a large amount of leads which you can whittle down to closed deals.